AOTW Rapid-Fire!! Flame Body, Early Bird, and Imposter
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Oh, Abilities. You are so varied. Some of you are awesome, some of you are useless. And while many of your are complicated and mutli-faceted, still others are elementary and straight-forward. Well, at least the latter get company when I do these articles! It’s another three-pack of pokémon powers this week, folks. This is Ability of the Week Rapid-Fire: Flame Body, Early Bird, and Imposter!
First up this week, we’re looking at Flame Body. This 
This is either the face or your doom or your incubator. ...Weird combination, I know.Ability was introduced in the first set of Abilities back in generation three, and is a fire-type pokémon’s bread and butter; specifically, the Magmortar evolutionary family, to whom Flame Body is something of a signature Ability. Apart from the Spitfire Pokémon and his kin, six other evolutionary families have access to Flame Body either naturally of within the Dream World, including Chandelure, Magcargo, Moltres, and a few others. There are two uses to Flame Body. The first, battle applicable effect, is that when a physical move is used on a pokémon with Flame Body, there is a 30% chance that the attacking monster will contract a burn. The second effect is the best friend of avid breeders: a 50% reduction in the number of steps you must take for an egg to hatch.
We’ll have to delve a little bit into game mechanics for the second Ability up: Early Bird. First seen in generation three, this guy is the crux of your Rest-user, or your secret weapon against stallers that like to use Hypnosis or Spore, or else people that like to run Dream Eater or Nightmare, and here’s how. When a pokémon is made to fall asleep, the number of turns that it will remain asleep is predetermined by the game, up to six turns. Early Bird looks at that number and divides it in half. If the predetermined number of turns is an odd number, it will round down. And, if the game determines one turn of sleep, Early Bird will wake up your pokémon immediately! Some of the pokémon that can use Early Bird include Kangaskhan, Dodrio, Xatu, and Shiftry.
Last up this week, we’re talking about a new Ability from
Yeah, Ditto's a Power Ranger. AWESOME. generation five, and it’s an exclusive to one specific pokémon. Here’s Imposter. The good Travis already touched on this Ability briefly in Four Dream World Pokémon To Consider, but I was already planning on writing this when that article came out, so nyeeegh. Imposter is Ditto’s Hidden Ability, accessible by capture in the Dream World, and is effectively a built-in Transform. As soon as Ditto enters battle, it automatically Transforms into its opponent, eliminating the need to do so manually with its signature move. In Travis’ Rare Article, he also points out the ingenious suggestion of equipping an Imposter’d Ditto with a Choice Scarf. You’ll be limited to one move, but you’ll be able to outrun the pokémon you just copied, giving you the edge. And, as the user “Sh4dox” pointed out in the comments of Travis’ post, the only EV training you need invest to a competitive Ditto is HP, as all of its other stats will be dependent on what it Transforms into.
That does it for me, trainers! Next time we’ll take a look at a less obscure Ability, and something you might be able to make a pretty sick combo out of. See you next week!
PS- There’s about a week left in my June-A-Palooza character commission special! I’m offering 50% off of any custom artwork of anything you like (under the condition that you don’t turn around and use it for profit). You can check out my DeviantArt or SheezyArt pages for details. Thanks!
